The present invention relates to audiotext systems designed to provide full access to traditional databases and telecommunications systems, such as local area networks, the Internet, other external databases, telephones and fax machines, etc., and more specifically to audiotext personal ad services.
Audiotext personal ad services are a popular way for people to meet, and are available in most newspapers and on many cable television systems. In a typical service, an advertiser calls a live operator and places a text personal ad. An advertiser then calls an audiotext system and records an audio message, often referred to as a greeting, which expands upon the advertiser""s text ad by describing in more detail the advertiser and the type of person he is seeking. Personal ads are then published in a newspaper. A personal ad includes a 900 telephone number and an ad mailbox number permitting a caller to listen to an advertiser""s voice greeting. A caller can respond to an ad by recording a reply voice mail message for the advertiser. An advertiser retrieves a message by calling the audiotext system and entering a password given at the time of ad placement. In another format, live operators are not used. Instead, an advertiser first records an audio greeting via a telephone. An operator then listens to the audio greeting off-line and writes a text summary of the audio greeting for publication in the newspaper.
With the expansion of the Internet and other on-line services, personal ad services have been created to take advantage of this new medium. A typical service allows an advertiser to place a text personal ad that is published on the Internet on an HTML (HyperText Markup Language) page. An Internet user may respond to a personal ad by sending an advertiser a message via electronic mail. The limitation of this approach is that an Internet user cannot listen to an audio recording of an advertiser, a feature that is the central to audiotext personal ad services. Another limitation is that many people do not have Internet access, thus limiting the number of advertisers and respondents.
In another format, an attempt is made to integrate audiotext personal ads services with the Internet. Using this approach, personal ads are published in both the newspaper and on the Internet. Each personal ad includes a 900 telephone number and an ad mailbox number permitting a caller to listen to an advertiser""s voice greeting. This approach still has the disadvantage of not allowing an Internet user to listen to an advertiser""s voice greeting via the Internet. Moreover, an Internet user can only respond to a personal ad via a telephone because this approach does not allow Internet users to exchange messages with telephone users.
To summarize, existing Internet personal ad services are limited in that they lack many of the features available on audiotext personal ad services. Also, existing personal ad services do not provide a means for those using an audiotext personal ad service to effectively communicate with those using an Internet personal ad service and visa versa. Therefore, there is a need for a personal ad system that seamlessly integrates an audiotext system with an Internet server, allowing straightforward communication between those using a telephone and those using the Internet. Such a system has been proposed in detail by the present inventor which comprises application Ser. No. 08/744,879. However, there is still the need to address some of the problems inherent in an integrated audiotext and Internet based personal ad service.
Because of their popularity, a personal ad services published by a metropolitan newspaper or cable television system can attract several hundred or more advertisers at any given time. This creates a serious problem for both the media company and the individual advertiser. Because of the costs associated with printing a newspaper, it is not always possible or desirable to publish in the newspaper all the personal ads available at any given time. This practice can, however, lead to disappointment for individual advertisers whose ads are not published. Moreover, because of the costs of publishing personal ads in print or on television, there is a need for newspapers and cable television systems to find ways to maximize the profits of these personal ads services. Since these profits flow from the number of responses an ad receives, the need arises for a system that maximizes the number of responses an ad published in the newspaper receives, while accommodating the needs and desires of individual advertisers.
The present invention accommodates these competing needs by creating a means to select ads for publication in the newspaper based on past performance of individual personal ads, thus attempting to optimize the number of responses to the printed personal ad column as a whole. At the same time, all personal ads are published on the Internet so as to accommodate all advertisers regardless of the past performance of their ad. Finally, by fully integrating the Internet personal ads service with the audiotext personal ad service, advertisers whose ad only is published on the Internet are in no way disadvantaged by fewer features or options.